523 DEFINITIONS
subjective, abstract content. Thus, for me, abstraction
has the meaning of an energic depreciation of the object,
In other words, abstraction can be expressed as an intro-
verting libido-movement.
I call an attitude (v. Attitude) abstracting when it is
both introverting and at the same time assimilates to
already prepared abstract contents in the subject a certain
essential portion of the object. The more abstract a
content, the more unrepresentable it is. I adhere to Kant's
view, which maintains that a concept is the more abstract,
" the more it excludes the differences of things "x, in the
sense that abstraction at its highest level is absolutely
removed from the object, thereby attaining the extreme
limit of unrepresentability. It is this abstraction which
I term the idea (v. Idea). Conversely, an abstraction
that still possesses representability or obviousness is a
concrete (v. Concretism) concept.
2. Affect.—By the term affect we understand a state
of feeling characterized by a perceptible bodily innervation
on the one hand and a peculiar disturbance of the idea-
tional process on the other2, I use emotion as synony-
mous with affect I distinguish—in contrast to Bleuler
(v. Affectivity)—;feeling from affect, in spite of the fact
that no definite demarcation exists, since every feeling,
after attaining a certain strength, releases physical innerva-
tions, thus becoming an affect. On practical grounds,
"however, it is advisable to discriminate affect from feeling,
since feeling can be a disposable function, whereas affect
is usually not so. Similarly, affect is clearly distinguished
from feeling by quite perceptible physical innervations,
while feeling for the most part lacks them, or their intensity
i Kaiit, Logict § 6.
* Cf. Wundt, Grundzeichnungan der physiolog, Psychologief 5te
Aufl. Ill, pp- 209 ff.